"Eighteen-hundred-dollar tickets. Lovely, that's just lovely," his wife said back.

The footage was tweeted by his son Tommy, with the caption "Hey @Delta, be glad my father is such a good sport about sitting in water for a whole flight."

Mr McCullough said his father "sat there for well over an hour - the flight attendants were made aware of the situation before take-off".

At least six people were soaked by the end of the ordeal, but because the flight was full none of the passengers could be relocated.

"They fixed it by stuffing napkins in the ceiling above my dad before the final decent, but it continued to downpour on multiple passengers behind us for the remainder of the flight."

Delta responded to the video, saying: "That is not OK." The company asked for the flight confirmation number so it could "get this taken care of and escalated".

Mr McCullough said Delta offered a US$100 travel voucher, US$1,700 less than the price of the actual ticket.

Meanwhile, passengers on a Delta partner flight operated by Alitalia out of JFK in New York bound for Rome had to disembark Friday after waiting for two hours on a "steaming hot plane" with no air conditioning, according to a tweet by passenger Adam Fertmann.